The Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution took place around 8000-3000 BCE (Patton, lecture). During this time humans began to produce food and started to tame and domesticate animals to make their daily work easier to accomplish (Patton, lecture). Domestication is when people are in control of the breeding of plants and animals. This is done so that humans can select and keep the traits that make the plant or animal more useful for human needs …show more content…
(Stein, 1). Those needs can include things such as food, transportation, and materials for clothes. There is evidence that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming caused changes in communities.
Because of the growth of agriculture, this time period led to great advances for humans.
One of those advances was the organization of human communities. After the shift from hunting and gathering, people were able to start to settle down in the areas that they cultivated. By giving up the nomadic way of life, humans discovered the advantages living in a community had. Since they were now depending on agriculture and didn’t have to worry as much about finding food, they had more time to think about the meaning of life. They also began to come up with new inventions to improve their quality of life, such as the sickle for cutting grain and pottery to hold their belongings (Patton, lecture). Some of the other things that came into existence in this age changed everyday life. These included, the plow, loom, wheel, bricks, calendars, as well as the belief in gods and goddesses (Patton, lecture). The spread of food production led to the development of urban civilization (Stein, 2). Now that there was more food that was easily accessible, the populations of these communities grew. The growth in numbers aided the start of larger and more complex
civilizations.
The farming villages later advanced into more complex civilizations. Some of the first known civilizations were located in the four river valleys. These river valleys include the Nile River in northeastern Africa, the Tigris & Euphrates rivers in Middle East, the Indus River in India, and the Huang He in China (Patton, lecture). So why did the first civilizations form along rivers? It was observed that rivers supplied a continuous and dependable supply of water (Bolman). The constant supply of water was vital for farming and for drinking. These rivers, along with the areas climate and geography, formed the development of the early river valley civilizations.
The Neolithic Revolution is an important development in human history. Humans were no longer having to stress so much about the lack of food, and they also began to enjoy life because of the new inventions they created. The Neolithic Revolution was the first stepping stone into the great civilizations we see today.